Alright, doing a proper update to this thing! We left London 2nd March and arrived in Glasgow on the 6th March. We drove through a lot of little towns and stayed in a few bigger ones, and generally loved it! I'll go through town by town:
Oxford: we drove up here and stayed in a caravan park overnight, and had a delightful pub dinner - two fish and chips for £7! All the drinks here are in pints and wonderfully cheap, from about £2 - £4 for your average beers and ciders. The next day we tripped in and saw a few campuses of the Oxford University (turns out there's 42) and wandered around the Ashmolean Museum looking at very old things for a fair while.
Nottingham: this place was just awesome, though very gimmicky with Robin Hood stuff. We arrived there late in the day but managed to get into the last tour around the Galleries of Justice, which was a fantastic attraction. It's a tour through the Nottingham Courthouse and prison underneath, with character actors and lots of information on jail-life and shipping to Australia (which was weird). We ended up staying in a hotel at the last minute, as the caravan park reception closed early and we decided fuck it, we needed a shower and a warm room. The van is great for travel, but the duvet can't keep your face warm when it gets to zero!
The next day we headed to the City of Caves, a huge range of man-made caves under Nottingham. There are up to 1000 years old from the first settlement in the town, and were used for bomb shelters, shelter for criminals, tanneries, and kinds of fun drunken past-times. Nottingham likes to drink. After that we headed up to Sherwood Forest in the pouring rain and traipsed to the Major Oak, a massive tree there. It's 10m around, largely hollow and lovely to look at. We didn't linger too long due to the rain and mud, but we did see a squirrel!
Lincoln: owner of a very beautiful cathedral. We turned up there too late to get in and instead braved the utterly FREEZING winds to walk around and look at it, then sought refuge in a local pub for dinner. We stayed road-side that night (and kind of regretted it due to the intense cold) and went to the Lincoln Cathedral the next day. It's honestly one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen, and with restoration would probably be as lovely as St Pauls in London.
Scarborough: the same day we went through Scarborough briefly. We did a spot of shopping for some cold weather gear, wandered along the beach-front (English beaches are hilarious) and then buggered off to Whitby!
Whitby: probably the favourite of this leg of the trip. Whitby is a small town with next to no chain stores, no real cinema, and a lot of charm. We stayed in the best B&B of all time with the nicest hosts possible, and had a fantastic seafood dinner at The Magpie Cafe. Turns out magpies in England are pretty little things and Australian magpies are a whole different species. Whitby also has a fantastic Abbey, but unfortunately it was closed over this period so we could only admire from afar. But we did get to feed ponies, so it all balances out.
We also briefly stopped in Penrith for lunch, but to honest there's not much to say there - old English buildings, but not so nice as to be exceptional. Tom didn't like the cheese on his panini, if anyone cares.
So now we're in Glasgow, which outdoes Melbourne for changeable weather from what we've seen so far. It's moved between overcast, raining, and blinding sunlight every few minutes, and even had sleet that almost was snow for a while there. We're staying with Heather in her shared apartment and spent the first day wandering and doing some shopping - we all got proper hiking shoes - and tomorrow are tripping up to the Scottish Highlands!
So that's that - photos on Facebook :)
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